How many aid groups knew that Hamas was hiding in a hospital and lied about it?
Hamas used Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital as a base for terrorist operations. That’s the obvious conclusion following Sunday’s discovery of a large terrorist tunnel beneath the hospital along with videos of Hamas taking Israeli hostages inside.
Now comes an important question for Congress: Which US-funded international organizations knew the truth about Shifa and helped Hamas cover up its war crimes?
The Israel Defense Forces this weekend discovered a tunnel beneath Shifa hospital that extends 10 meters downward and 55 meters wide, leading to what could be a booby-trapped door. Special units specialized in handling explosives have been summoned to advance to the next section.
Meanwhile, Israel also released security footage showing two hostages brought through Shifa by Hamas terrorists after the Oct. 7 massacre as hospital workers watched, suggesting a widespread conspiracy to conceal both the presence of hostages in Shifa as well as Hamas’ terrorist infrastructure within the compound.
Last week, Israel found two more hostages dead near Shifa. One of them, according to Israel, was murdered inside the hospital.
That Hamas has long denied using Shifa as a terrorist site is not surprising. It is also not surprising to learn that the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry (the same one that reports civilian casualty figures) has been lying all along about Shifa’s true terrorist nature.
What should be surprising, however, is the possible complicity of prominent international organizations that receive hundreds of millions of dollars from the United States, groups that are supposed to uphold international law but appear to have allowed Hamas to commit war crimes.
Within days of the Hamas massacre, Fabrizio Carboni, regional director of the International Committee of the Red Cross for the Middle East, began spreading Hamas disinformation, telling international media that Gaza “hospitals risk becoming morgues.” ”.
When Carboni said this, it is possible that he already knew that Gaza hospitals were being used as terrorist bases and that there were hostages hidden beneath those hospitals.
In the days following Israel’s first public message that the Shifa hospital is a key Hamas terrorist site – an indication that the Israel Defense Forces would at some point try to remove Hamas from that hospital – Carboni went into overdrive with propaganda. designed to keep Shifa directly in Hamas. ‘ hands.
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When the IDF approached Shifa, he stated that “the information coming from Al Shifa hospital is worrying. It can’t go on like this. Thousands of injured, displaced and medical personnel are at risk. They need to be protected according to the laws of war.”
Carboni apparently forgot to mention that Hamas is the party that violates the laws of war by basing its terrorist operations inside a hospital and also hiding in that hospital the very hostages that the ICRC has sworn to protect.
In its 2022 annual report, the ICRC says it received $689 million from the United States last year, about a third of the contributions received from all countries combined. This is a large amount of taxpayer money sent to an organization that may have betrayed its most fundamental duty to respect the Geneva Conventions by covering up Hamas war crimes and abandoning Israeli hostages.
Another US-funded agency must also answer for its complicity in these war crimes.
The World Health Organization, which received more than $100 million from Washington last year, joined the chorus of pressure on Israel to stay away from Shifa hospital, telling global media that the hospital was no longer was working and that innocent patients were dying.
The same question posed to the ICRC should be posed to the WHO: What did it know about the terrorist tunnels under Shifa and when did it know it?
The IDF has already discovered similar tunnels in Gaza’s Rantisi hospital along with evidence that hostages were also held there. A baby bottle found on top of a box with the WHO logo completed the agency’s charge of complicity.
The ICRC and WHO have strong lobby groups in Washington that will fight to protect the flow of taxpayer money. If, as expected, the State Department does nothing to hold these groups accountable, Congress, which controls their finances, should intervene. The first step: investigate. Next up: Pause U.S. funding until leadership changes and reforms ensure that complicity in terrorist war crimes will never happen again.
Richard Goldberg, senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is a former National Security Council official and senior advisor to the United States Senate.
